Community garden management plans

Community garden management plans

Participatory processes, like this garden planning session, are necessary for the smooth fnctioning of community gardens.

The Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network has been working with local government and new community garden groups to formulate community garden management plans.

What follows is a set of common topics that community gardeners have found useful in devising a management plan. This is followed by link to examples of community garden management plans.

The plans are proactive and need not be complicated. Their advantage lies in setting up decision making, conflict resolution, communication and planning processes before garden development starts. Time spend in developing management plans is seldom wasted.

Devising a management plan should be the second activity undertaken by a new community garden groups, following the formation of the core group and before applying for access to land (which includes submission of the management plan and draft design). Once access is given and legal details are finalised, then you can start the design and construction of the community garden.

Management plan template for garden teams

This Management Plan template is about the governance of your community garden…. it’s about social design rather than site design although it does cover management of the site in general.

The Plan was developed through participatory processes with the cooperation of teams setting up new community gardens. As a participatory design process developed over a number of years, approaches adopted in its development included World Cafe, the Workshop Method , structured conversation and strategic questioning.

The need for establishing governance processes for new community gardens has been evident for some time. It has become apparent over the years that the lack of clear means of dealing with conflict and with dominating personalities in community gardens can drive away gardeners and even lead to the abandonment of gardens. The need for establishing some kind of agreement among gardeners about conduct, decision making processes and resolving disagreement is a learning of community gardening.

Another reason for developing the Plan was that some local governments ask for a plan of management as part of their application for assistance in community gardening process.

The Plan will be reviewed from time to time and changes made. We welcome your feedback on using the plan so that timely changes can be made.

Topics in the ACFCGN template management plan:

1. Vision1.1 Purpose of our community garden1.2 Objectives of our community garden?2. Management of site2.1 Managing waste on site – organic and non-organic waste2.2 Will our garden use organic gardening practices?2.3 Outline our proposed organic gardening practices2.4 Water management2.5 Use of sustainable materials on site2.6 Garden tools and storage2.7 Site safety2.8 Allocation of plots2.9 Management of shared areas2.10 Dealing with common objections to new community gardens3. Management structure3.1 Roles in the community garden3.2 Code of conduct/gardeners agreement3.3 Decision making process3.4 Resolving disagreement3.5 Communication4. Policies4.1 Access and acceptance4.2 Alcohol, smoking and drugs on site5. Funding5.1 Membership fees5.2 Applying for grants5.3 Fundraising activities5.4 Other6. Training6.1 Start-up phase – planning and construction6.2 Recruiting and induction of new gardeners6.3 Ongoing training workshops7. Partnerships and community engagement8. Contacts9. Other information that might be applicable

Contents of a simple management plan for your community garden

The topics that follow are a guide. You may have additional topics to consider or, perhaps, you may not need all of these.

1. Vision

purpose — your overall aim in setting up the community garden

objectives — things we would like to accomplish.

2. Management needs

management roles (eg. president, treasurer, secretary etc)

conduct — what will be your member’s responsibilities to other gardeners and to the community garden? (eg. behaviour, site safety and orderliness, treatment of visitors etc)

how you will make decisions together ?(eg. consensus, majority rule)

how will you resolve disagreement?

how you will communicate between the management team and membership and with the landholder/public/media?

3. Safe gardening

how will you manage safety and health in the garden ?(eg safe use of tools)?

outline the training process for new garden members related to safety in the garden.

4. Policies/agreements

To ensure that new members understand their rights and obligations, and to ensure that behaviour in the community garden is acceptable to the group, some community garden teams have devised a gardeners’ agreement that new members accept as a condition of membership.

management of the whole site (eg waste management, pest management, soil improvement, water

water management — runoff and drainage, harvesting of water

types of sustainable materials brought on site and their safe storage

access (eg opening times, will the garden be locked at night, when can interested people enquire about joining, disabled access)

acceptance of a range of people and of children

allocation of plots

management of shared areas

alcohol, smoking and drugs onsite

dogs onsite

5. Funding the continued operation of the community garden

membership fees

fundraising

applying for grants.

6. Training

what will be your process of inducting new gardeners?

how will you familiarise new gardeners with accepted practices ?(eg. compost production, organic gardening methods such as pest management etc)

what initial training will be needed in the start-up stage of the garden?

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Comments

Ian

Thanks for this head start. We are a long running garden that pre-dates any requirement for a management plan. Recent changes (for the better!) mean we need to put a plan in place. I had no idea where to start. Thanks again.

Thanks, I have a vision of organic vegetables herbs fruit and flowers all growing in our little neck of the world. Having people come and help, enjoy digging eating talking and sharing, I was overwhelmed where do i start, so thanks i have a start when its up and running i will post photos
I love the speech I have a dream. Butterfly’s and bees birds singing thanks you may make it a reality Maree

I am having trouble printing the template out. I can save to word or pdf and i can view it, but it just wont print. I would like to print it out so i can scribble notes, etc on it and to give to the committee to do their notes on it too. Please help

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